Anaphora works in several ways “Harlem.” First, it provides a recognizable pattern and structure to the speaker’s questions, beginning in stanza 2. “Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?” the speaker asks. “Or fester like a sore—And then run?” These opening lines of the stanza establish a pattern that will repeat, with some variation: “Does it stink like rotten meat?” the speaker asks next. “Or crust and sugar over— / like a syrupy sweet?”
Note the words and phrases that repeat anaphorically:
Does it …
like …
Or …
Does it …
Or …
like …
The only line in this stanza that does not begin anaphorically is the one exactly at its center, line 5: “And then run?” The stanza, then, creates a highly patterned form for itself. The repeating beginnings of the questions and lines give them energy and momentum, and also make them, in a sense, predictable, creating a kind of deceptive calm.
Importantly, then, “Harlem” also disrupts this predictability by how it changes its own anaphora. Note, for example, how in the second half of the stanza, the order of anaphoric phrases changes, from “like… Or… ” to “Or… like.” Stanza three also shifts away from this pattern, though echoes it with the “like” in line 10 (“like a heavy load”). These subtle changes introduce an increasing sense of instability in the poem.
The last line both changes and combines the anaphora that has been introduced up to this point. “Or does it explode?” the speaker asks, bringing together the “or” and the “does it” in the second stanza into a single line and a single anaphoric phrase. Here, the tension that has built in the poem up to this point between pattern and variation comes into full awareness, as the poem transforms its own pattern. Like the explosion the poem describes, this transformation may seem sudden or startling, yet the poem has actually been building toward this point all along.